The Brookhaven leader. [volume] (Brookhaven, Miss.) 1883-1891, 1887-12-15

lntIJ " III DJiS nc llc "IiOis Dhl VI ~
NJ on and commit larceny upon tho
American corn crib. And some Of tho
men will sit in churches and in reforma-
tory institutions trying to strain out tho
small gnats Of scoundrelism, while in
their grain elevators and their storehruseS
they are fattcniug huge canels, which
they expect after awhile to swallow. So
ciety has to be entirely reconstructed on
this subject. We are to find that sin Is
inexcusable in proportion as it is great.
know in our time the tendency is to
charge religious frauds against good men,
They say: ..Oh. what class of frauds
you have in the church of God in this
day." and when an elder of a church, or
a deacon, or a minister of the Gospel. or
n superintendent of n Sabbath school
turns out a defaultcr, what display heads
there are in many of the newspapers.
Great primer type. Five line plea: An
other Saint Abscondcd, ""Clerical Scoun-
drClisnl, Religion at q Discount, "
''Shame on he Churches, " while there are
thousand scoundrels outside the church
to where there is one inside the church,
, and the mi,hehavior Of those who never
see the inside of church is SO great it is
Christian to get out of their company.
But in all circles, religious or irreligious,
the tendency is to excuse sin in proper
ton as it is mammoth. Even John Mil
ton in his Paradise Lost, while he
condemns Satan. gives such a grand de-
scription of him you have hard work to
suppress YOUR admiration. Oh, this
straining out Of small sins like gnats, and
this gulpin9 down great iniqutles like
camelS.
This subject does not give the picture
of one or two persons, but is a gallery in
which thousands of people may see their
likeness. For instance, all those people
who, while they would not rob their
neighbor Of a farthinG, appropriate the
money and the treasure of the public.
4 man has q house 10 sell. and he tells
his customer it is worth 100000. Next
day the assessor comes around ami The
owner says it is worth $4,000. Tt
government Of the United States took off
the tax from personal income. among
other reasons because so few people
would tell the truth. and many man
with an income of hundreds of dollars
day made statements which seemed to
imply that he was about to be handed
over to the overseer of the poor. Care
full to pay their passage from Liverpool
to New York. yet smuggling in their
Saratoga trunk ten silk dresses from
Paris and a half dozen watches from
Geneva, Switzerland. telling the custom
house officer on the wharf, There is
nothing i'll that trunk but wearing ap-
parel. and putting So gold piece in
/ ! 81
Described il the text are all those who
are particular never to break the law of
grammar. aI3d who want all their Ian
guage an elegant specimen of syntax,
straining out all the inaccuracies of
speech with fine sieve Of literary criti-
Cism, while through their conversation
go slander and innuendo, and profanity
and falSehoOd larger than q whole cara
van of canlcis. when they might better
fracture every law of the language and
shock intellectual taste, and better let
every verb seek III vain for its Tomina-
tive. and every noun !or its government,
and every prepostion lose it way i'll thA
sentence. and adjectives and particplrs
and prOnouns get into grand riot worthy
of the Fourth ward on election day. than
to commit Ii moral inaccur0cv. Letter
swallow a Thousand gnatS than one
camel.
Such persons are also described in the
text who are very mach alarmed about
tho small faults Of Others. and have no
alarm about their own great transGres-
sions. There are il every community
and in every c.lG:ch watchdogs who feel
called upon 10 keep their eyes on others
I full of ,i.1Io
They wonder If that man is not Gishon-
est, if that man is not unclCan, if there is
not something wrong about the other
man. They are ALWAYS the first to hear
of anything wrong. EultUes are always
the first to smell CarrioH. They ere self
appointed detectives. lay this down as
a rule without any exception, that those
people who have the most faults them
selves are IL" most n.ercileSs in their
watching of Others. From scalp OF head
to sole of foot they are full of jealOusies
and hypercriticis;nS. They spend their
life in hunting fOr musl.rats and mud
turtles, in~tea. Of hunting for Rocky
Mountain C2gicS, alUcys for something
mean instead Of something grand. They
look at tAuir ncirhliura' impcrfections
through microscope, and look at their
own imperfcctions through a telescope
upside down. Twenty faults of their
own Go not hurt them SO much as one
fault of somebody else. Their neighbors'
imperfcc, ions are like gnats and they
strain them out; their own imperfectons
are like camel5 and they swallow them.
But lest some might think they escape
the scrutiny of the text, | have to tell you
that we all come under the divine satire
when we make the question of time more
prominent than the question of Ct, nifty.
Come now, let Us all go into the con-
fessional. Are not all tempted To make
the question, Where shall live now?
greater than the question, Where shall I
live forever? How shall | get more dol
lars here: greater than the question.
How shall lay up treasures in heaven?
the question, How shall | pay Iuy debts
to man? greater than the question, How
shall meet my obligations to God! the
question, How shall l gain the world?
greater than the question, What if lose
my soul? the question, Why did God let
sin come into the world? greater than the
question, How shall l get it extirpated
from my nature? the question, What
shall / do with the twenty, or forty, or
seventy years of my sublunar existence?
greater than the question, What shall /
do with the millions of cycles of my post
terrestrial existence? Time, how small it
is! Eternity, how vast it is! The former
more Insignificant in comparison with the
latter than gnat is insignificant when